What Not to Automate

Presented by:

I'm a software engineer for Puppet, where I'm currently working on our open source remote task runner Bolt. I graduated from Oregon State University with a BS in Computer Science in June 2016, where I worked as a Front-End Engineer for the OSU Open Source Lab. In my free time I enjoy hanging out with friends, hiking, experiencing new things, and enjoying a wide variety of podcasts, tv shows, blogs, books, and other media.

No video of the event yet, sorry!

During a talk at DevOps Days Seattle the speaker stated
"Automate as much as you can". While this seems like an obvious statement at
first blush, on further inspection there are a number of exceptions to this
rule, begging the question: What shouldn't I automate? This talk will give
you a framework for deciding whether something is worth automating. We'll discuss:

The return on investment of time to automate

The ethical considerations of automating particular tasks, such as hiring

Things that require humans intervention

And more!

We'll consider this question through the lens of economics, business, ethics,
and psychology to explore the wide world of automation and it's consequences.